Hazen Paper Co. v. Biggins Revisited: The Supreme Court's Dismissal of Adams v. Florida Power Corps
U. PA. JOURNAL OF LABOR AND EMPLOYMENT LAW
Cassaundra L. Manningt 0
0 t J.D. 2004, University of Pennsylvania Law School 2004; Columbia University 2001. The author is the Executive Editor of Production for the Journal of Labor and Employment Law. 1. Adams v. Florida Power Corp. , 535 U.S. 228 (2002). 2. 29 U.S.C
In April of 2002, the Supreme Court dismissed Adams v. Florida Power Corp.,' once again leaving unanswered the question of whether the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA)2 permits disparate impact claims. The Court previously left this issue unresolved in 1993 by remanding Hazen Paper Co. v. Biggins3 without deciding the issue of whether disparate impact theory liability is available under the ADEA. Consequently, there is a circuit court split regarding the applicability of disparate impact claims to the ADEA. Walter Biggins, a sixty-two year old employee of the Hazen Paper Company, sued after being fired just weeks shy of the date on which his pension would vest.4 He filed suit under the ADEA alleging that his age was a determinative factor in Hazen's decision to terminate him.5 Hazen claimed that Biggins was discharged for engaging in business with Hazen's competitors.' The district court found for the plaintiff on the ADEA claim and the holding was affirmed by the court of appeals.7 The Supreme Court granted certiorari to decide whether an employer's interference with an
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REVISITED: THE
OF ADAMS V.
employee's pension benefits vesting is violative of the ADEA.
On the surface, the interference with pension benefits may not appear
to be an age discrimination issue. In fact, courts have been in disagreement
over seniority being a proxy for age.8 However, since pension eligibility is
determined by the number of years an employee has worked for a particular
employer, pension is "empirically correlated with age."9 Termination
purely based on age is a blatant violation of the ADEA and accordingly, the
Supreme Court remanded the case, allowing the district court to properly
determine Hazen's motivation for firing Biggins. °
Interestingly, Biggins did not assert a disparate impact claim under the
ADEA. Biggins' allegation was a pure disparate treatment claim."
Despite the asserted claim being under a disparate treatment theory, this
case contributed to the circuit court split and the academic debate over the
availability of disparate impact claims under the ADEA. The Court
proclaimed, "we have never decided whether a disparate impact theory of
liability is available under the ADEA ... and we need not do so here."' 2
The facts of Adams are divergent from those of Hazen in that in the
former, the plaintiff class was alleging disparate impact theory liability
under the ADEA.1 3 The plaintiffs claimed that the Florida Power
Corporation's reorganization scheme disproportionately and adversely
affected older employees. 14 While the district court first certified the
plaintiff class, it later decertified the class, maintaining that the individual
claims were too dissimilar to proceed as a class. It then allowed
individual plaintiffs to file claims, but found that the ADEA precludes
8. Id. at 608-09. The Court noted this in its discussion of precedent in Hazen:
Compare White v. Westinghouse Electric Co., 862 F.2d 56, 62 (CA3 1988)
(firing of older employee to prevent vesting of pension benefits violates
ADEA); Metz v. Transit Mix, Inc., 828 F.2d 1202 (CA7 1987) (firing of older
employee to save salary costs resulting from seniority violates ADEA), with
Williams v. General Motors Corp., 656 F.2d 120, 130, n.17 (CA5 1981)
("[S]eniority and age discrimination are unrelated .... We state without
equivocation that the seniority a given plaintiff has accumulated entitles him to
no better or worse treatment in an age discrimination suit"), cert. denied, 455
U.S. 943 (1982); EEOC v. Clay Printing Co., 955 F.2d 936, 942 (CA4 1992)
(emphasizing distinction between employee's age and years of service).
Id.
9. Hazen, 507 U.S. at 608.
10. Id. at 614.
11. For a discussion of the difference between disparate impact and disparate treatment
see infra pt. II.
12. Hazen, 507 U.S. at 610.
13. Adams v. Florida Power Corp., 255 F.3d 1322, 1323-24 (1lth Cir. 2001).
14. Id.
15. Id.
disparate impact claims. This finding was affirmed by the court of
appeals. 16 Although the court of appeals acknowledged that the Supreme
Court had not decided the issue, it found against the plaintiff class because
of a perceived symmetry between the ADEA and the Equal Pay Act
(EPA); 17 the Supreme Court has held that disparate impact claims are not
viable under the EPA.'8 The Supreme Court granted certiorari and
subsequently dismissed the claim.' 9 The opinion simply reads, "[t]he writ
of certiorari is dismissed as improvidently granted. It is so ordered., 20
Even though the facts of these two cases differ and the complaints
alleged different theories of discrimination, the cases are strikingly similar
in that the Supreme Court made i (...truncated)